Elective danger

July 15, 2015

Should we now expect to hear that our school buses will not pick up kids next year because the drivers are not properly certified?

Or that our airport cannot accept planes that want to land because we are not keeping our runways clean?

Maybe our ambulances won’t run because they forgot how to tie bandages.

According to the Times our county hospital administrators are scrambling to avoid losing the hospital’s certification.  They have a little less than three weeks to fix their problems.

Surprise?

Back in December we wrote More problems at the county hospital and explained that our hospital had been given an “F” rating by the folks at Medicare and that payments to the hospital would be reduced as a result.

One of the problems was “preventable errors”.  Another was “hospital acquired conditions”.

Think infection.

Now the Joint Commission (the accrediting agency) has come to the hospital and as what must have been an absolute surprise to everyone paid particular attention to the sterilization process.

Were we prepared?  According to the Times our hospital administrator said:  “”Our employees in that area are entry-level type of employees. We’re going to look into raising the statute of that department, management and of the associates.”

I don’t know whether the Times reporter slipped up or if the official actually said “statute”.  They probably meant “stature” but more importantly the hospital did not do anything about the problem when it was pointed out to them in December.

Failure costs money

Now specialists are being flown in and incredibly the hospital has stopped performing surgeries unless they are necessary.  Even then the patients are going to be given the option of going to another hospital (presumably at our cost).

As for elective surgeries, you might ask if the county hospital should be performing them at all.  If we find that the hospital makes a profit on them and needs them to help balance the budget then we have another problem.  That money is being lost while the hospital finally pays attention to what they were penalized for back in December.

Where are our county commissioners?

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Don’t shift the burden, lower it

July 7, 2015

Evidently the other day as our city manager proposed next year’s budget he said that out of 125,577 homes in El Paso 45,509 are eligible for a senior citizen or disabled homestead discount.

By my reckoning that comes to 36.2%.  Our city is now giving a $40,000 reduction in assessed property value to those eligible.  This does not cap the property tax the senior has to pay.  Instead it reduces the value used to compute the tax.  The formula is:  take the assessed value and subtract the exemption–call that the taxable value–multiply the taxable value by the tax rate giving the tax owed.

On the other hand seniors have their amount of tax owed frozen for purposes of school district taxes.  That means that means their tax bills do not go up regardless of the rate.

School district taxes account for almost 50% of our local tax rate here in El Paso.  The taxes the city assesses are about 25% of our total bill.

Shouldn’t we take this into account as we consider public debt?  How can we expect young people to stay here when we are asking them to pay these bills?

It seems to me that if we spent less our tax bills could be lower.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

10 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Preferential treatment, an El Paso tradition

June 25, 2015

I was disappointed to read the article in the Times the other day about our former commanding general of Fort Bliss being accused of wrong-doing in a purchasing process.

We do not know what he did or did not do.  We do know that the Times, through reference to a Washington Post article, told us:

Pittard was not accused of financial gain but was reprimanded by the Army for his “excessive involvement” in awarding the $492,000 contract and for “creating a perception of preferential treatment,” the Post reports.

Further from the Times article:

An Army review board is also considering whether to strip Pittard of his rank as a two-star general before he is allowed to retire later this year, according to the story posted online Sunday.

Perception

We should compare that to what is going on in El Paso.  We have seen time and time again that not only is there a perception of preferential treatment, there is in fact preferential treatment.

The difference is that here in El Paso we tolerate it and whenever someone raises an objection the various local government officials circle the wagons to protect the culprits.  Vendors that file open records requests are considered to be the enemy.  Major contracts are cancelled and awarded to cronies.  The public loses.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Paying on the never never

June 16, 2015

According to an article in the Times the other day our county hospital has only paid $5.7 million to reduce the principal on the $120 million in bonds issued in 2008.

That’s an average of $814,000 per year over the last 7 years.  At this rate it will take another 140 years to retire the bonds.

That obviously cannot be the plan.  They must be planning to increase the principal payments at some point.  The question is what that will do to our property taxes.

According to the article we have paid almost $42 million in interest and only about $6 million toward principal.

Commissioners court

We don’t get to elect the hospital board or the CEO of the hospital.

Our elected county commissioners court has responsibility for the hospital budget and bonded indebtedness.

They either have not been paying attention or they have decided to stick it to us in the future.

It looks like our only option here is at the voting booth.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

4 Comments | County Government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Wrong if you do it, but not if I do

June 11, 2015

Our county judge has been complaining publicly about the fact that the children’s hospital is using an out of town law firm to handle their bankruptcy.

She fails to point out that the county and the county hospital both use an out of town firm to handle their bonds.  The same lawyer seems to be at the bottom of some of El Paso’s most controversial issues.  He is now with the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright out of their Dallas office.

Searching the web you will find that the firm has a few local clients:

  • The City of El Paso (evidently including the ball park)
  • The County of El Paso (evidently including the clinics and the children’s hospital)
  • El Paso Independent School District (evidently including the corporation that wants to issue the bonds for the new central office)
  • El Paso County 911 District

They may be involved with other local governments, time will tell.

This graphic comes from a presentation that the county hospital was using to sell us on the children’s hospital bond issue:

epchteamofexperts

At the time the lawyer was with his own firm.  He evidently later joined Norton Rose Fulbright.

The county judge is certainly being disingenuous when she complains about the children’s hospital while she is doing the same thing.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | Ball park, City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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